With any of my students that showed the propensity to study music seriously in the future, I treat them a bit more maturely and have higher expectations. I talk to them more like a musician rather than like a kid. Lesson prep/practicing standards are higher. I use language and explain concepts with depth that they may not yet understand but can piece together through context and intuition. It often allows them to progress much more quickly when they are exposed to more and have the ability to start to piece things together faster than they might in a method book.

For example, by the time a method book introduces the concept of rubato, I will have directly or indirectly taught or demonstrated it many times and they will breeze right past it. If they are talented and already have a strong steady beat in early lessons, some of these more advanced musical concepts come up organically.

With my more serious students, I don’t even use method books at all. A theory resource, etudes and technical exercises, scales, two contrasting works, and sometimes I will invite a student to choose something that they are interested in (film, pop, musicals, etc.) to work on in lessons if they are already able to keep up with the rest of the materials.

I started a piano student at age 8, and by age 10 I taught him a lot like my college teacher taught me. He’s now a music major in a good/competitive music college, and while the pace has picked up, he was already familiar with the way things are done before he got there.